Here's my idea, which assumes joint and several liability (which is when a plaintiff can collect all or part of the verdict from any defendant):

When people sue for these kinds of things, as I would hope happens here, they will name the officers as well as the city corporation. While it's common to collect from the city, because that's who has the money, in cases like this one I think winning plaintiffs should pointedly collect -- hard -- from the police officers themselves. Take their homes, their cars, their spouses' jewelry, and their savings. Force them into bankruptcy, and then show up at the bankruptcy hearing.

A few cases like that, just a few, and civil rights will bloom like a thousand flowers.

"Last week Mike Sandvick, head of the Milwaukee Police Department's five-man Special Investigative Unit, was told by superiors not to send anyone to polling places on Election Day. He was also told his unit -- which wrote the book on how fraud could subvert the vote in his hometown -- would be disbanded."

The left likes to claim that there isn't any evidence of voter fraud. Hard to find evidence when you shut down the people tasked to look for it.

This is entirely standard policing procedures throughout the land. There is nothing remarkable about this.

The police serve the interests of the powerful, and act largely as security guards for the property owners and their lackeys in government. Brutality is more the order of the day than is "civil" service to the public at large. If you told a cop today he was supposed to be a "peace officer," he would likely take it as an insult and accusation, and thump your ass for your insolence.

There are better and worse police departments, and certainly better and worse individual police officers, but the prevailing mode of operation of police nationwide has become militarized, and even "good" cops largely acquiesce to the code of blue, and the worst elements of policy and individual practice go unchallenged and unpunished.

After the recall Walker should encompass the collective bargaining law to the all civil service employees including the cops and fireman. Then he should man up and pass a right to work law and strip civil servants of qualified immunity and go for voter fraud ID with stiff mandatory prison sentences. If you are going to shoot a bear, make sure you kill him.

What you could is only sue the police officers only, but then you couldn't invoke Section 1983. And it's got to be true that the union or any entity can pay if it chooses to. Money is, after all, fungible. And you can't bankrupt someone who is getting money from someone else.

Definitely a weakness of my fantasy. It would have to be a case where nobody wants to protect the cops. Unlikely.

Madison -- The union could also choose to pay. Or anybody. It would have to be a crime committed by a cop that was so terrible that no one would want to pay, and you would have to have a plaintiff who wants pure justice more than money for what happened to them.

Robert Cook said...This is entirely standard policing procedures throughout the land. There is nothing remarkable about this.

The police serve the interests of the powerful, and act largely as security guards for the property owners and their lackeys in government. Brutality is more the order of the day than is "civil" service to the public at large. If you told a cop today he was supposed to be a "peace officer," he would likely take it as an insult and accusation, and thump your ass for your insolence.

Somebody got a speeding ticket recently.

Cops are basically rent gatherers for the state. They have little interest in your safety. They have a huge interest in your wallet.

For those who didn't click through on the voter fraud link: "n February, Mr. Sandvick's unit released a 67-page report on what it called an "illegal organized attempt to influence the outcome of (the 2004) election in the state of Wisconsin" -- a swing state whose last two presidential races were decided by less than 12,000 votes.

The report found that between 4,600 and 5,300 more votes were counted in Milwaukee than the number of voters recorded as having cast ballots. Absentee ballots were cast by people living elsewhere; ineligible felons not only voted but worked at the polls; transient college students cast improper votes; and homeless voters possibly voted more than once."

[The effort was coordinated by workers for the Kerry for President 2008 campaign in Milwaukee.]

If a Presidential campaign disenfranchised voters by physically restraining voters from voting, or by imposing a poll tax, or by sending voters disinformation about the appropriate times and places to vote, there would be (has been) universal outrage. Even one person disenfranchised in this way is too many.

But allowing people to vote, and then erasing their votes with an illegal vote for another candidate has the exact same impact, and does not generate any outrage at all in Democratic circles. In fact, our Attorney General regards efforts to reduce this kind of activity as racist. What does that tell you about him, and his opinion of what kinds of people try to disenfranchise others by voting illegally?

One might think so. But Act 10 exempts municipal police and firefighters from the collective bargaining provisions. By far the largest such unions are MPD and MFD, which supported Walker in his election to governor. (West Allis police and fire, a much smaller community, also supported him, but withdrew their support during the recall process.)

If you don't drive a car, you are not really an American--unless you are disabled or something.

That makes no sense. I used to live in NYC and I can tell you I knew tons of people there that never owned a car much less drove one in their lives. They didn't need to, but I wouldn't call them not really american.

Yeah, Ken, lots of people don't own cars. I didn't own one for over 15 years except for a brief period overseas, when it was necessary. I finally got one, resentfully. My wife does not have a driver's license and points out to me that truly powerful people are driven everywhere they want to go.

The fact is, if you live in any kind of city, you don't need a car. There are trains, buses, taxis, bike lanes, your legs. There is Zipcar. It's easy, and it saves a lot of money.

It is probably going a bit overboard to say that somebody who does not drive is not a real American. We are a big country with a lot of variety among our 350 million people.

It would, however be accurate to say that anybody who lives in a place where driving is not necessary and owning a car is actually inconvenient is statistically very unusual and such a person is likely to be very out of touch with the way that most Americans live their lives.

It would probably also be accurate to say that somebody living in a city that has very good public transportation either does not have children in school, has enough money to send their children to a private school or does not like their children very much.

There is theoretically no reason that bad schools and public transportation should have any relationship but the correspondence between good public transportation and bad public schools seems to approach 1.0.